Evaluation of family intervention through unobtrusive audio recordings: experiences in "bugging" children.
Hide a small recorder to get honest home baseline data before you start any parent training.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers clipped tiny radio transmitters to kids' shirts.
The mics sent live audio from the home to a recorder in a parked van.
Families picked their worst daily problem times, like homework or bedtime.
No observer sat in the room, so the tape caught real family life.
They taped before and after a family intervention that is not described.
What they found
Deviant child behavior dropped at the chosen problem times.
Parents gave fewer commands and used less negative talk.
Some gains also showed up during random home samples.
The bug stayed hidden, so families acted as usual.
How this fits with other research
Fay (1970) used a radio beep in class six years earlier.
That study gave candy for on-task behavior; this one just listened.
Duker et al. (1991) later showed that obvious recorders change behavior.
They found bigger gains when kids knew the device was there.
This seems to clash with the hidden bug, but the difference is the goal.
M et al. wanted honest baseline data; C et al. wanted reactivity.
Koegel et al. (1992) swapped audio for video in school.
They let kids watch their own playground tapes and saw better peer play.
All three papers show that recorded feedback, seen or unseen, can guide change.
Why it matters
You can now buy a $30 voice recorder that fits in a pocket.
Tape a baseline night of homework without sitting at the table.
Review the clip, pick one parent behavior to shift, then tape again.
The method gives clean data and keeps family stress low.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Five children referred to a child-family intervention program wore a radio transmitter in the home during pre-intervention and termination assessments. The transmitter broadcast to a receiver-recording apparatus in the home (either activated by an interval timer at predetermined "random" times or by parents at predetermined "picked" times). "Picked" times were parent-selected situations during which problems typically occurred (e.g., bedtime). Parents activated the recorder regularly whether or not problems occurred. Child-deviant, parent-negative, and parent-commanding behaviors were significantly higher at the picked times during pretest than at random times. At posttest, behaviors in all three classes were substantially reduced at picked times, but not at random times. For individual subject data, reductions occurred in at least two of the three dependent variables for three of the five cases during random time assessments. In general, the behavioral outcome data corresponded to parent-attitude reports and parent-collected observation data.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1976 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1976.9-213